To be clear: my issue (and in fact, most peoples' issues) are not with the Knight Foundation. In fact, they appear to have been above board in every way in this whole debacle. It is the WMF board who are the problem here.

See my comment here for just a few comments on this issue:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11101262

Frankly, there's a lot more - to understand the issue better you might want to read Liam Wyatt's blog posts:

http://wittylama.com/2016/01/08/strategy-and-controversy/

and here:

http://wittylama.com/2016/01/30/strategy-controversy-part-2/

Thanks – I appreciate the references

That's OK, ironically it was Wikipedia that taught me to always back up my statements with references :-)

As an aside, I think the internet is simultaneously great at spreading absolute bs and disinformation and pushing people to have citations handy... paradoxically, both seem to be getting more frequent. (It all depends on where you browse, clearly).

Yeah, nobody knows this more than myself. I created [citation needed] and I've watched it be misused for years. I am glad I came up with the idea, but I'm resigned to the fact that it's human nature to misuse a valuable idea.